About 4 years back, it got to be pretty obvious that SOMEONES in USA with serious cash backing and PR savy had an agenda involving either a hot civil war or the credible threat of one as a bargains tool. Watched it build, watched the incompetent responses of those who might have defused the situation. It’s a better/smoother job than was done in some middle eastern and Eastern European/Asian countries recently too.

I’m pretty godamn sure the interests served by this ARE NOT going to be those of the foot soldiers on either side, just like the last time our countries’ competing power structures pulled this cynical bullshit.

It’s an orchestrated, top down AstroTurf operation, but these things tend to get out of control + blowback- I really hope we don’t go there.

Much as I hate to do it, I have to agree (slightly) with Reid. At least on the surface. Once it got to the point that Bundy and his fanboys shut down I-15, that qualifies as domestic terrorism to me. No different that seizing an airplane on the tarmac and holding the passengers and crew hostage until you get your demands met, just in this case he was holding interstate commerce hostage. Maybe it’s just because I’m a trucker.

The difference in being armed should be apparent by now: Armed protestors get much more respectfully handled by law enforcement. I can attest that “Occupy Phoenix” had a far better handling than Occupy, say, Portland.

Well, as ever, telling the government that they’ll have to be willing to shoot through women is designed to prove one way or another that government is either sexist or unprepared to face the media blowback. Well, not government per se, but the individuals who were ACTUALLY going to have to pull the trigger.

Hogwash. It was a protest. Heck in Benghazi they would have brought rocket launchers to the protest.

Actually, considering the arms the BLM was carrying, and the snipers, and dogs, and blah blah… Being armed out there was not a bad idea. The situation was escalated because the BLM brought guns and snipers to a conflict that could have been handled through a lien on his property, and seizing his finances. By Ried’s definition, the BLM were the terrorists. They brought firearms to intimidate a man who was not a threat.

I wouldn’t say Bundy’s a terrorist, he’s just a greedy rancher who’s too cheap to pay the BLM’s absurdly low grazing fees. Now, the so-called militiamen who are abetting his crimes because they’re seduced by the romance of a ‘real-life range war’ might qualify as terrorists. If they really cared about fighting government tyranny they’d march on the NSA’s server farm; it’s just over in Utah.

Terrorism as ORIGINALLY defined:
Committing crimes with the motive of creating a general state of fear and terror in order to coerce the population and government into conceding to a political goal.
That’s where the “Terror” in “Terrorist” comes from.
Is Bundy attempting to create terror in the general population? No? Then he’s not a terrorist.

But, but, he HAS to be a terrorist! The government can do ANYTHING to a terrorist, and it’s all ok! Because terrorism.

@Dr. Tranny: By your lights, Chris Christie is a terrorist, and deserves any vile thing we can imagine. Blocking roads differs mainly in scope and not in kind with sit ins. I’d put caltrops closer to terrorism, because they actually do damage.

Did Christie (and/or his lackeys) have a gang of armed thugs blocking the road? No, just some orange traffic cones and “road closed” signs. Therein lies the difference.

Also, terrorism doesn’t require a body count. Just ask Richard Reid (no relation to Harry), currently serving a life sentence in a federal supermax prison for a terrorist act in which nobody was even so much as injured.

I have to agree with Arkanabar on this one. Shutting down an interstate doesn’t (or at least shouldn’t) inspire terror; it’s not directly threatening innocents or anything of the sort. Arkanabar’s comparison to a sit-in is very apt; while a sit-in (or strike, etc) could endanger somebody’s health as a side effect, it’s primarily disruptive rather than threatening. Note also that, according to Trooper Loy Hixson, nobody in the crowd that shut down I-15 threatened violence. You could argue that the fact that some of them were armed was inherently a threat, but given the number of arms on both sides of this, I don’t think that would be a valid point.

Hold up: Do you know anyone who’s ever driven through one of those “road closed” coned off sections?
Did the responding traffic cop happen to come unarmed?
Look, you may not see through one or two abstractions, but the gun is still on-call.

Bear in mind that “terrorists” get targeted with drone-launched bombs, do not have constitutional or civil rights, or even the rights granted by the Geneva Convention, and basically are treated by our government not like people, but as vermin.

I don’t care if Cliven Bundy is an asshole or a welcher or a thief or writes bad checks. Harry Reid is trying to gin up public support for the government to kill him like a rabid dog, and have the media cheer the slaughter on because “they had it coming.” Any Republican president would have the entire news media up in arms over the horror. And in fact, George Herbert Walker Bush did.

As far as terrorism goes, they sure do suck at it. Where’s the dead innocent victims? Bundy supporters were facing off directly with law enforcement, a government apparatus. Most terrorists usually aim for soft targets, civilians. So yes, I’d stick them with the outlaw label for now.
But still, as much as certain liberals and Democrats have been bitching about everything being deemed terrorism under the PATRIOT act for the last 13 years, none of them see a problem panelling their pitical opponents terrorists. Maybe if I could stick my head up my own ass and think my farts count as political discourse I could think like a Politician.

As for Mick… dumbass. And also the Liberator company makes some waterproof blankets which REALLY save you a lot of laundry headaches after Alex comes over.

I’m not afraid of cattle ranchers, or rednecks blocking the road. If I tried to walk through, I would not be concerned that I would be killed to make a point that the road is CLOSED!! I would not be terrorized. Other roads would not scare me. I would still drive places; not terrorized.

I am afraid of being shot, detained, harassed, killed to make a point, held as a deterrent to others… or otherwise harmed should I try to walk through the other crowd. That crowd scares me. They wear masks.

Where was the outrage when Mick was telling THEM about the other’s little quirks? It takes TWO to spread gossip, girls. One to talk and one to listen. This isn’t being upset that he talked, it’s being upset that he talked to someone else, TOO.

So, was it a stupid shit move to tell either of them anything private like that? Oh, hell yeah. Should he have kept his dumb fucking mouth shut? Well, duh. Do they have a leg to stand on when BOTH of them just let him dish “the dirt” on the other? Shit, no.

He’s an asshole for talking, yeah. But if you only get upset when he’s telling YOUR secrets…. so are you.